Plans for a Lusitania Museum have taken a step forward with contractors now being sought to help build a single storey visitors centre and a basement museum set into the hillside at the Old Head of Kinsale.

Earlier this year, the owner of the wreck, located 18km off the Old Head, Gregg Bemis signed over ownership to the Lusitania Museum/Old Head Signal Tower Heritage CLG company.

The heritage group has already completed the restoration of the Signal Tower and created the Memorial Garden, and they are now seeking a contractor to help develop a single-storey visitors centre and a basement Lusitania Museum.

The proposed new building would be closely integrated with the two completed phases and would lie at the highest point of the Old Head peninsula with a direct view past the Old Head Lighthouse to the point where the Lusitania wreck lies in 90 metres of water since May 7th 1915.

The Signal Tower already acts a mini Lusitania museum and houses artefacts from the ship.

"The recent gift to us of the wreck of the Lusitania has greatly enhanced our scope to tell the Lusitania Story through display of many more such artefacts," the company said.

The proposed Basement Museum will be designed to draw the visitor back in time to over 100 years ago to help them gain an insight into the Lusitania's 'magnificence', into the many different kinds of people who were on board, their individual stories of loss and survival, from multimillionaires to poor people who were refused entry to Ellis Island and indeed to returning exiles.